Leica public offering

[captyng@vtx.ch (Gerard Captijn)]

I received from the Union Bank of Switzerland the 145-page preliminary
offering circular related to Leica Camera AG going public. There is just too
much data in the document to sent it all to the members of the group, but
here are just five random items to give you the flavour.

1. Leica sold in 1993/94, 1994/5 and 1995/6  9,322, 11,208 and 10,171
M-cameras and 18,009, 19,170 and 21,186 M-lenses. R-cameras: 9,055, 6,816
and 6,294. R-lenses: 15,829, 14,482 and 12,236.

2. Research and development expense during above 3 years were DM 6,999, DM
7,975 and 10,900 thousand respectively.

3. Research and development for the coming years will concentrate on
expansion of the R-system (lenses), the further development of the M-system
(camera and lenses), compact cameras with the APS system, the further
development of high performance projectors, electronic imaging and new
developments in the area of binoculars and scopes.
 
4. The 3 management board members (Hoffman/Kiesel and Müller) earned
together DM 890,000 during 1995/1996.

5. The six major suppliers to the company are Matsushita, Osaka (compact
cameras), Feinwerktechnik, Wetzlar (mechanical parts), Hughes Elcan, Midland
(lens heads), Kyocera, Tokio (optical parts and systems), Minolta, Osaka
(mechanical- and optical parts) and Hoya, Tokyo (raw glass and optical
parts). These 6 suppliers counted for 35% of the total purchasing volume
during 1995/1996.

The bottomline of the issue is, in my opinion, the desire of the Schmidheiny
family, indirectly owner of Leica Camera AG, to realize the difference
between the value of the Company as a private- and as a public company,
additionally avoiding any risk of future erosion of the value of their
holding. As share prices and price/earning ratios are very high today, their
timing is excellent.

Gerard Captijn,
Geneva, Switzerland.
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